baby you were my picket fence
by hollyhobbit101
Summary: The grieving process never ends.


**A/N: And, finally, here is the last of my three birthday pieces for Sam. I hope you guys enjoy it!**

 **Prompt: The grieving process never ends**

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 _i. denial_

You don't really remember now, but you think that this part was the shortest. After all, it is difficult to deny something when it flashes before your eyes every time you close them. When you dread sleep, because you know that you will see her burn and scream and die. Still, sometimes, you will think of your home, and you will imagine going back to her and her kisses and _your life._ If you imagine hard enough, it seems real, like she is not dead and you will see her again. But. imagination and reality are not the same, not like your dreams, and you know that she is gone.

 _ii. anger_

Dean sometimes says that you scare him, with your anger and your passion and your drive to get revenge. You never tell him that sometimes it scares you, too. When you were a kid, you were always angry at something - Dad, Dean, the life, that kid from school who would not _shut the fuck up_ about the fact that you live in a motel - but it was never true anger. Not this white-hot rage that threatens to consume you if you let it go for even a second. Jess tempered your teenage anger, softened you with her soothing words and her perfect ways, but her death has released something that she would be horrified to see. You think that this thought should calm you, but it only enrages you further, because she is not alive to be horrified at anything.

 _iii. bargaining_

You get drunk one night and head for the nearest crossroads. You've never seen it before, but you know it can be done and you'll be damned if you don't even try. A voice in the back of your mind reminds you that this is not what Jess would want for you, but you're past the point of caring. It's selfish - _beyond_ selfish - but you'd rather have ten years with her than twenty more without. But, when it comes, the demon just laughs at you. Says you're part of something way bigger, and that the boss would have his head if he made a deal with Sammy Winchester. He tells you that _that hot piece of ass_ got what was coming to her for shacking up with a Winchester. You exorcise him for that, make it slow, painful, and yet you don't feel any satisfaction when it's done. You head back to the bar and drink some more. It doesn't help.

 _iv. depression_

There are days when you can't even bring yourself to get out of whatever shitty, stained, uncomfortable motel room bed you've had the pleasure of occupying this week. Days when omens are nowhere to be found, and your research yields the square root of jackshit, and you honestly just can't. Jess was your light that brought you out of the shadows of hunting, and now you're right back where you started, like she had never been there at all. Except it's not, because then you would know no different to a world without Jess. It's darker than you remember. Then there are the days when you live on autopilot - staring at screens, pretending to read articles, grumbling at Dean. You think that's how Sam is supposed to act, so that's how you act. You know you're not fooling anyone, least of all Dean, but you're too deep in this game to quit now. It's not the Winchester way. Whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.

 _v. acceptance_

When the Yellow-Eyed Demon is dead, when Dean's deal is made, when you have accepted Jessica's death - this is when the worst of it hits. Because acceptance means knowing she is dead, and knowing that you can do nothing to change it, and know that you have to live out the rest of your days without ever seeing her again. You have memories, of course, but memories are not the same. They're old, worn out from you going over them too many times, and they are finite. No new episodes, just the same old re-runs, time and time again. Acceptance never ends, and you will always feel that pang in your chest whenever you think of her, and you realise afresh that _she is gone_. Even twelve years down the line, when you see her dying face in a drug-induced mist, you will rasp out her name, and it will feel strange on your tongue from disuse, but that emptiness that she left behind will not have changed. You come to understand that this will never change, that the grief will never go away. Perhaps it will dull, or fade, as time goes on, but it will never fully disappear. This is one race with no end in sight.

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 **A/N: I legit wrote this in twenty minutes, sorry if it's bad. Thank you for reading, and please leave a review if you have a moment. Bye!**


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